A New Birth of Freedom: The Translator blog tour

Enjoy this part of a book tour! Interview with the author following the summary. There is also a giveaway at the end of post for a free ebook!



A New Birth of Freedom: The Translator Book Summary:

Noam Chomsky argues that communication with aliens would be impossible. Stephen Hawking argues that it would be extremely unwise even to try. What if it were absolutely necessary to do so? This question arises with extreme urgency at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, in this time-travel, alternate-history trilogy, A New Birth of Freedom.

Excerpt Link to Prologue:
http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/chapters/ANewBirthOfFreedom_RobertPielke.shtml

Robert G. Pielke's Bio: 

Robert Pielke, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, now lives in Claremont, California. He earned a B.A. in History at the University of Maryland, an M. Div. in Systematic Theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and a Ph.D. in Social Ethics from the Claremont Graduate School.

He taught on ground and online for countless years at George Mason University in Virginia, El Camino College in California and online for the University of Phoenix. Now happily retired from “the job,” he is doing what he always wanted to do since he wrote his first novel at ten in elementary school. It was one paragraph, three pages long and, although he didn’t know it at the time, it was alternate history.

His academic writings have been in the area of ethics, including a boring academic treatise called Critiquing Moral Arguments, logic, and popular culture. Included in the latter is an analysis of rock music entitled You Say You Want a Revolution: Rock Music in American Culture. He has also published short stories, feature articles, film and restaurant reviews. His novels include a savagely satirical novel on America and its foibles, proclivities and propensities, Hitler the Cat Goes West, and an alternate history, science fiction novel, The Mission.

Most recently, he has updated and revised his book on rock music, which is being republished by McFarland & Co.

He swims daily, skis occasionally, cooks as an avocation, watches innumerable movies, collects rock and roll concert films, is an avid devotee of Maryland crabs and maintains a rarely visited blog filled with his social and political ravings. His favorite film is the original Hairspray; his favorite song is “A Day in the Life”; his favorite pizza is from the original Ledo Restaurant in College Park, MD; and he is a firm believer in the efficacy of “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” Somehow his family and friends put up with him.

Prices/Formats: $16.95 paperback, $4.99 ebook
Pages: 394
ISBN: 9781611605426
Publisher: Whiskey Creek Press
Release: November 1, 2012

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1611605423?tag=tributebooks-20

1.      What inspired you to write your first book?

** This is going to be a long answer – because “first book” in my case is kind of ambiguous:

** As a kid, I went to the movies every weekend to see whatever was showing. It didn’t matter what it was, I’d be there. And I’d always wind up ‘playing a role” from the movie– in my mind if not in reality – until the next weekend’s film. And it usually wasn’t a role from the film, it was “me” being in the reality portrayed in film. Some of my favorite rolls were cowboys – Hopalong Cassidy was my favorite. (I pretended to be Tom Mix too, because he was my father’s favorite. I never saw his movies – before my time – but I read the comic books.

But when it came to “cowboys and Indians” in these movies I gradually became disturbed by the fact that the Indians were always “bad” and the cowboys were always “good.” There were a very few films – not many, to be sure -- that had a different take on this. Broken Arrow  was one of them (Jimmy Stewart and Jeff Chandler as Tom Jeffers and Cochise). And that interested me mightily. Again, my father influenced me. He, too, always thought their portrayal was one-sided. I wondered why there weren’t more movies like Broken Arrow.

Well, in the absence of any other films to speak of, I began imagining new scenarios for cowboys and Indians and played out these roles in my mind – and with the other kids I hung out with. After I learned how to write and how to use my mother’s Remington typewriter, I wrote a story, White Cloud, about an Indian who united all the Plains tribes along with all the Eastern tribes in the early seventeenth century to resist the European invasion. (It was 3 pages long, one paragraph and single spaced.) I was in the fourth or fifth grade. Somewhere, I still have it, and before my inevitable demise, I do a thorough search for it.

This was literally my “first book.”

What I didn’t realize was that I was writing alternate history. And I’ve doing it ever since. Unlike a lot of alternate history writers, I always have something in my stories that accounts for the “shift” from the path of history as we know it to the “altered” history. Usually it involves aliens and almost always time travel. So the genre I write in is really pretty much of a niche of a niche of a niche. And the readers are – thusly – few and far between!

My “next first book” was a religio/socio/political near future satire: Hitler the Cat Goes West. I wrote it in 1995, and if it were to be made into a film, it would be rated NC-17! It was published by an ultra-tiny university press, which has long since disappeared. Now I’ve given it to iUniverse and it’s still on sale….for the hearty and strong-stomached and venturesome souls.

2. What book are you currently reading?

** Like many other authors, I cannot read when I write – it’s far too distracting.

3. What's the hardest thing about writing this specific book?

** It pertains to the entire trilogy – I have to balance and harmonize a time travel story with an alternate history and have it make sense when a double first contact takes place – all without it becoming a “three stooges comedy.”

4. Any advice for someone who is wanting to become an author?

                ** One word: WRITE! [Don’t just talk about it….DO it.]

5.What would a typical day be like for you when you are working on a book?

** Up at 4 am – write from 6 to noon – lunch – nap – cooking shows on TV – fix dinner – films – bed by 11 or 12.

6. How did you come up with the idea of this book?

** Faulkner said it best in Intruder in the Dust – “Every Southern boy whenever he wants...” can imagine being on the field at Gettysburg on the third day of battle, just before Longstreet gives Pickett the command to go. “It hasn’t happened yet…” and “there is still time for it not to begin.” Now, I’m not a Southern boy, but I can still imagined some scenario where it does not begin. Plus, I lived in Gettysburg for three years and always had a fascination with history and the Civil War.

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